


the twenty fourth distance

by saaifione



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Not A Fix-It, depends on your definition, of a sort, probably somewhere around chapter 645, revival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1666946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saaifione/pseuds/saaifione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How fast should I live my life in order to be with you again?</p><p>Or: Obito botches up the Mugen Tsukuyomi and gets stranded in the middle of nowhere with a slightly-different, mostly-annoyed Kakashi. This is not the best way to psychologically reconcile your thirteen and thirty one year old selves.</p><p>(Meanwhile, Rin just wants to find her boys.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the first

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this before second thoughts consign it to the void. I think un-betaed is a fair warning so un-betaed.

It is not the familiarity of the voice that wakes him, nor the unfamiliarity of it, but the disorienting combination of the two. It is the tiredness, the irritation, the faintest taste of panic. It is the words, almost drowned out by the crackle-static filling his head, but clear enough for him to make out the order: "Wake up, deadlast."

No, he thinks at first, just five shades shy of petulant. You can't make me.

It is the kind of thought he usually regrets having.

His head throbs with heated spasms, worse than that one time Minato-sensei left them with Jiraiya and the man had grinningly offered them a bitter drink. Kakashi had taken one sniff before cringing away in disgust, but _he_ had been curious and had felt like he had something to prove. Rin had frowned reproachfully when he took the glass, but her eyes had widened, surprised, when he downed it in one gulp and managed to not quite choke, even if Kakashi had followed not long after. She refused to treat them both the following day, head pounding and life miserable, and Kakashi had only made it worse. _If your chakra control was better you could just burn it out of your system,_ Kakashi had growled, though the edge of pain and irritation in Kakashi's own voice made it apparent that even he wasn't achieving much success.

"I said, _wake up_."

The sudden spike in killing intent is all the warning he has before a sharp kick is delivered to his head. Self preservation and instincts force him to roll to his feet despite the stabbing pulses of pain, but the strike still manages to glance across his forehead. Bright stars blaze across his vision and he crouches, blinking harshly at the ground, forcing it into focus.

He remembers: once during the war Rin had cupped her hands around his cheeks and stared harshly into his eyes. _If the stars are smaller than ration pills then you can still fight_ , she had said, sharp and commanding, and maybe a little bit desperate beneath it all. He had sniffled and blinked the tears and the stars out of his eyes, but by that time she had already had a kunai drawn and was running towards the battlefield, where Kakashi was white blaze and cold steel tearing at the enemy nins' throats.

 _Broke the second clause of medic nins_ , Rin had whispered sheepishly after, face scuffed because she really wasn't the best at fighting,  _medics aren't supposed to go out onto the front lines_. They had threatened to suspend her licence, though it was an empty threat and they all knew it, because Konohagakure couldn't afford to leave anyone out of the war.

But that was another time and another life, and in this one the Third Shinobi World War is long gone and buried and so was he and so was she, but he is still Uchiha Obito. In this moment there are hands reaching for Obito's face, the rubbery substance of Zetsu's skin, the creases of his own. The killing intent is gone, and there is a part of Obito that does not want to flinch away. Obito can hardly remember a presence he would so willingly let close so he blinks the stars out of his eyes and asks-

"-Rin?"

The hands retreat and Obito looks up. He is met with a flatly unimpressed stare.

"Try again."

"Kakashi," Obito says blankly, because the last he'd been aware the man had been (cold and viscous jamming an enemy's senbon into their own eye- no.) dying painfully from the combined facts that his blood did not want to stay in his body and his chakra did not want to exist.

Dying was not a good look on Kakashi, Obito had thought, pale skin turned waxen and eyes bruised and dark.

But youth is a worse look.

Kakashi at thirteen is a sketch of a mistake, Kannabi Bridge in watercolor that bleeds but never dries, Rin's death in charcoal that smudges against everything it touches. Kakashi at thirteen is something Obito wants to kill, wants to cherish, is something he at one point had not yet learned to forgive, and at another point envied but did not think to truly hate.

But even these memories Kakashi does not wear right, jounin slacks and the Rengōgun's _shinobi_ kanji emblazoned on his forehead, hitate pushed up to reveal his eyes. This is Kakashi with a betrayal Obito never thought Kakashi could commit: pale scar bisecting his left eye though both eyes remain bleak and gray. As if he'd never lost the eye in the first place.

 _But it was my gift_ , a tiny part of him whispers. It's a part Obito's learned to ignore.

Obito's own eyes are black and Sharigan-less in the reflection cast by Kakashi's hitate. They burn too much to even consider calling on the Sharigan or the Rinnegan, a bitterness on his tongue thick with irony after an entire existence crafted with their shapes carved into his eyes.

He's had a dream like this, once. Maybe twice. Maybe more. But in the dream he'd been thirteen and Rin had been beside them, and he'd known he'd eventually wake.

Obito stares at Kakashi and thinks it has been a long time since he's seen Kakashi like this, since he's looked at Kakashi with eyes that are just eyes. But Obito cannot stand the sight of this boy and all the things he may or may not represent, so he crooks his hands into a clumsy tiger seal, gaze never leaving Kakashi's own.

"Kai."

The world does not shift. The sky does not break. Kakashi does not look any older. Mostly, he just looks annoyed.

"It's not an illusion," he snaps, casting his hand to the side, gesturing not just at himself, but at the world around them.

Obito follows the trajectory of Kakashi's arm and sees: no flower no tree no moon in the sky. It is clear and cloudless, the type of high wispy blue sky that makes him breathless just staring at how far away it seems. Obito recognizes the surroundings as their last battlefield, in as much as he can say a particular rock looks familiar. Yet there are no bodies and no blood staining the ground, rocks pale and bleached stretching as far as he can see. There is no Rin.

In this moment, this instant, Obito looks at Kakashi and thinks they could be the only two people in the world.

"No," Obito says, in what could be either denial or agreement, and it burns but he tries calling his Sharigan anyway. For heartbeats there is nothing but the feeling of a knife being rammed between his eyes and white static filling his ears. When he is aware of himself again, he is on his back and staring at the sky.

"Stop it," Kakashi says. He appears at the edge of Obito's vision, crossing his arms. From this angle, he almost looks tall again, form framed and wisps of hair highlighted by the brightness of the sky. "You're just going to make yourself pass out again."

"Again?" Obito echoes distantly, thinking, if he killed Kakashi now, it'd be as if he were the only one left in the world.

Kakashi's voice is dry but it manages to hold a surprising amount of spite regardless. "Chakra exhaustion," he drawls. "It's a pain to deal with, you know? Try using at least an ounce of common sense before acting- I'm reasonably certain you possess it."

Kakashi had uttered almost the same line their first mission together after Obito had been promoted to Chuunin, _you must have some common sense; the proctors couldn't have been that careless. They definitely would have had something like that checked._

Obito wonders how he ever managed to forget what an utter prick Kakashi was. He has spent so long thinking of Kakashi as a liar and trash and a guilt-ridden fool, the shock of it is almost embarrassing.

"Why are you like that?" Obito mutters. A memory, a ghost. A jerk with an incurable lack of social skills.

He is a snapshot out of time and Obito wants to burn him.

"I think it'd be better to ask yourself that question."

Kakashi says it with a _tch_ and a sigh, a glance to the side, which only post-false-death Obito has learned to read as a deflection. It means Kakashi doesn't know the answer either.

Yet the last thing Obito remembers is the Juubi, is Mugen Tsukuyomi, is a bloodless stretch of skin between Kakashi's mismatched eyes.

Obito hadn't even been trying to cast the genjutsu. He'd only had one of the eyes. But the flower had unfurled and the world had erupted and the swirl of Kakashi's kamui had been one of the last things he'd seen.

A quiet, horrible, thought slithers into his mind: maybe he failed. Maybe he was captured. Maybe this is a new form of torture for war criminals. Maybe this is just an overly-elaborate trick to mess with his head.

(maybe he failed maybe he failed maybe there'd never been a chance of succeeding in the first place)

"We need to leave," Kakashi's voice breaks through his thoughts, says _we_ like he is thirteen and expects Obito to follow him, says _we_ like he is thirty-one would never think to leave Obito behind.

Obito thinks: You're not the Kakashi I know.

But he isn't a Kakashi he doesn't know, either.

"It'd be better if you just left by yourself," Obito mutters. He doesn't have the energy or the concentration to care what Kakashi does since the man (the boy the memory) doesn't seem to want to kill him. He just doesn't want to have to look at Kakashi while Kakashi does it.

He'll be fine for a while, just staring at the sky, until he feels like moving or until Madara finds him. The old man's like a cockroach, utterly unkillable, though Obito figures if the man lied Obito would give killing him another try. Maybe this time it'll stick.

"If you stick around we might end up accidentally killing each other out of annoyance."

It's as charitable as he's felt towards Kakashi for the last fifteen years combined.

Obito expects it, almost, for Kakashi to say something right now, pretty and trite and ultimately untrue. _I may be trash, but I am not worse than trash. And I will not abandon a comrade, even if they wish to be abandoned._ Something aggravatingly repetitive that would make Obito regret ever uttering the words in Kakashi's presence.

But he doesn't. Kakashi doesn't. Rephrased so Obito can better comprehend it: Kakashi walks away. Picks an arbitrary direction, takes wide steps to avoid stepping on Obito's sleeve, doesn't turn back. Doesn't say a word.

 _But you should never step over your comrades_ , says the small voice in Obito's head. But Kakashi had done nothing of the sort. And they are not comrades.

This is Kakashi agreeing with him, maybe for once in this whole blasted war, but there is no satisfaction from being right. They'd both agreed Kakashi was trash, both agreed Rin was worth doing anything in order to protect. Their agreements are the most pointless, useless things ever because they never seem to make a difference.

Obito stares straight up at the sky as Kakashi walks away and does not think of getting up.

 

* * *

 

This is a secret, but only because Rin has no one else to tell.

She used to think that she should live each day to the fullest, that it was important to savor the sweetness of summer's first strawberries, to notice the color of leaves in autumn, to always tell her parents she loved them. She forgot sometimes, but most times she remembered, and she used to hope that it would be good enough.

Her family was caring and her friends, if not necessarily kind, were good, and her tragedies were tragedies but not overly cruel. She was born in war and lived through war and, comparatively, she thought her tragedies must not be very great at all.

But still.

She must have made a mistake somewhere. Maybe it was in meeting him. Maybe it was in watching him, in falling in love with him, in healing his injuries and mapping out the chakra in his veins, the grief in his bones, in knowing him well enough to know exactly how her actions would add to them. In knowing it was too late for one boy but maybe not for the other, and clinging to that thought until it was simply too late for them all.

She was familiar with them, intimately, lightning and tomoe and murder in a breath. She knew exactly where their blindspot was. (She had always been their blindspot.)

And this was not the way she wanted to die, but it was the only way she could be certain she would die. She wanted to be a good ninja, despite it all, and the dangers of not dying outweighed the consequences of this method of dying, so she jumped knowing her last sight would be of his tears in their eyes.

The secret is: it hadn't been good enough. She died full of regrets.

In the middle of Konohagakure, Rin opens her eyes.


	2. the second

Rin wakes up in the dark, and the first thing she thinks is: thank goodness. Thank goodness it was just another genjutsu, that Kannabi bridge is still standing, that the Iwa nin are trying to get her to tell them how Konoha plans to destroy it. Thank goodness Kakashi and Obito are still on their way to the bridge, have not turned around to save her.

Thank goodness, thank goodness, it was all just a dream.

Rin keeps her breathing even and her eyes at half-mast, twisting her wrists discretely to test her bonds. It takes her a second to realize that there are no ropes restraining her wrists at all, that the numbness of her hands extends to her entire body, that the pinpricks of pain she is feeling all down her limbs are from a sudden rush of circulation.

Her eyes fly open and she realizes that the walls are too close, that they are wood instead of stone, that the air is too stale to be living. It is not a cave, she realizes. It is a grave. It is- it is proof that she's failed that she's died that it wasn't just someone else's imagination.

Rin _cannotmovecannotmovecannotmove_ ; thinks, shutter-speed: chemical changes in the muscles; begins with the eyelids, neck, jaw; three to four hours after death, reaches maximum stiffness after twelve hours: rigor mortis.

She bites her tongue to keep from screaming.

Rin feels it before she hears it: there is something with her in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

This is what a grave is like: trapped in a cave, months after Obito's death and weeks before her own, staring down at Kakashi's ninken and thinking, it had been lovely. Lovely with soft brown fur and bright dew eyes and paws almost as soft as Pakkun's, until it had jumped in front of the enemy's poisoned senbon to save her. Trying to find the pinprick wound while the ninken thrashed and snarled and foamed at the mouth, while chemicals worked through its system and corroded the tissues of its brain. Listening to Kakashi whisper, _quiet, you have to be quiet. We can fix this- just- just- you have to be quiet._ Listening to Kakashi lie. Thinking she didn't know the physiology of a ninken well enough and wanting to apologize, but not, because any apology seemed too weak and Kakashi made a promise, once, so now he never asked her for them at all. Tracking how the ninken's whining snarls echoed in the cave and knowing that the Kumo nin were surely getting closer. Watching. Watching.

Watching as Kakashi pulled his hand away when the ninken snapped at him and tugged its collar when it snapped at itself. Watching as the ninken lunged at her, and not reacting fast enough to pull away. Watching as Kakashi laid a restraining hand on the back of the ninken's neck, as if to calm it, as if to pet it. Watching as Kakashi quietly snapped its neck.

Remembering, after: it was only when the ninken lunged for her that he'd done it, and the way Kakashi's breath had rattled just as loudly as the snapping of its bones.

 

* * *

 

This is what a grave is like: a prison, the day of her death, when she was pulled into the chasm where her heart should be and met the Sanbi. Standing, petrified, staring at the creature keening behind the bars, a mass of shadow and power and cosmic force, thrashing with too much pain to be rage. Noting its flesh as a mess of chakra lashes and chains, all the tortures Kirigakure could inflict, cataloging all the injuries she was incapable of healing. Wondering, because she'd always thought such injuries should be impossible, because tailed beasts were the creatures of horror stories and nightmares, should never be so mortal as to feel pain. Thinking of rabid dogs and baring her neck, of asking Kakashi to kill them. Counting each breath and each thrash and each shudder of the bars, staring at one pain-crazed eye and one eye that couldn't open and thinking, _you will be the death of us_. Feeling, because it was a loneliness that overrode the fear enough for her to curl her hands against the rusted bars, loneliness that made her whisper one request to a creature too pained to respond.

She whispered: "Will you die with me?"

 

* * *

 

This is what a grave is like: the Sanbi, answering now, yes. I would have said yes. But now I am telling you to live.

 

* * *

 

The ridiculous part of this entire situation, Kakashi thinks, is that after all has been said and done, he is going to die of dehydration. Of course, there is a chance that exposure will get him first, and that is perhaps the most interesting debate that has encompassed his entire existence: how he will die.

People have been taking bets for years, but he doesn't think either of these were the popular opinion. Asuma had placed his bets on lack of self-preservation doing Kakashi in, which really had the unfair advantage of almost always being true, but it doesn't much matter since Asuma won't be alive to claim his winnings anyway. Maybe Kurenai will get them by proxy; maybe Konohagakure is still standing and there will be people still alive to pay.

He amends himself. The ridiculous part of this entire situation is that after all has been said and done, Kakashi is still alive in the first place.

Kakashi lists these first, makes these facts the most important, does not think of Gai's loud voice declaring, _Rival, you have an astonishingly unique sense of priorities!_ , because Gai is the sort of person to do something stupid and heroic in a war and Kakashi does not know if there's been someone around to contain him. Kakashi has a mental list tucked away somewhere, containing all the possible scenarios he could think of resulting in Gai's death, and the statistics to go with each of them. Gai beat the odds fifteen years ago by somehow still being alive, and everything since the point of Gai opening the first Lotus Gate has been its own special brand of miracle.

Kakashi is careful not to formulate these feelings into thoughts. Thoughts are distracting at best, prophetic worse. 

For the next twenty minutes Kakashi pointedly and consciously does not think of anyone who might be dead. The known dead are safer, because their grief is worn and their regret is familiar, not distractions so much as companions. He thinks _Rin-Rin-Rin_ because he can no longer think of Obito.

He thinks of sensei, and of what sensei would do in this situation. Hiraishin, of course. Sensei would have reached everyone else already. But Kakashi does not have the chakra to try, does not know if he'd have had the skill and the stamina to reach them in an case. In his memory his sensei is defined in relatives: faster, stronger, better. (And even he could fail.)

The other aspects of his current predicament can be made unimportant. Kakashi takes them, compartmentalizes them, labels them "solution pending", and concentrates on running.

Kakashi can't feel a whisper of chakra in his bones, but for once his body is not taking that as a cue to crash land into the ground. It's not so much chakra exhaustion as chakra suppression, and maybe that is the cause of - just, everything. (His gait feels off. His smelling is dampened. His eyes burn like there is sand in his eyes. When he stared down at the man who was more enemy than friend, he couldn't muster up the will to kill him. He labels these all: solution pending.)

Kakashi runs because he has places to be, people to save, because suddenly the world is too big and he cannot move through it fast enough. He feels claustrophobic, trapped in a stagnated landscape where the sky is too high and the horizon is too far, and he doesn't know where he's going. South, he thinks, Konohagakure should be located to the south, but he can't tell much beyond that. The sun is untellingly high in the sky and his internal clock is shot. It all looks the same no matter how far he runs, so it feels like he isn't going anywhere at all.

Logically, this is not true. Logically, his strides should not be this short and his vantage point should not be this low and he should not have had to deal with Obito looking at him with those eyes. It is the same sort of eyes he looks at looks at Obito with, he suspects. Like he's seen a ghost. Like he wants to tear it apart and deny its very existence.

Logically, he should not have to deal with Obito at all, because Obito should be dead and buried and coronated in memory, untouched and unblemished by time. But no, this is not logical, is purely emotional, and he has a mission so emotions are currently not allowed. Emotions can be dealt with later, when everyone is safe, so maybe they never have to be dealt with at all.

Kakashi concentrates on running because it is the easiest thing to do, and has enough self awareness to admit that he might be running away.

"The greatest thing a shinobi can possess is self awareness,"  Minato-sensei had once told him. "If you do not know yourself, you cannot hope to know your enemy. If you do not know your enemy, you must accept the possibility of defeat."

He'd ruined the effect, then, by shrugging and sheepishly scratching his nose. "Well, you always have to accept the possibility of defeat. But it helps to know what your limitations are, and what your team mates' limitations are, and how you can fill in where the others lack."

Minato-sensei had had an infuriating habit of doing that, taking things and then qualifying them, back in the days when Kakashi's life was ruled by absolutes. Things like rules and mission parameters and failure is not an option (but in truth this has always been his life, he has only traded one set of guidelines for another). Kakashi has learned to borrow other people's words and other people's actions and imitate them almost perfectly enough to be called an existence. As the Copy Nin and that was perhaps his greatest trick of all.

But there is danger, Kakashi has learned, in putting too much faith in someone else's words, in someone else's actions. Though perhaps faith is a bad word for it. Faith, after all, is a horribly subtle thing that he no longer has the capacity to possess. So it is actions, words, individuality, putting his _self_ in someone else's words, and the danger lies in the fact that there is always a person who said them and people tend to fail.

And that there is the most frustrating truth that has encompassed his life: people fail. (He just tends to do it more than most.)

Kakashi counts footsteps, heartbeats, exhalations, converts them to distance in his head.

The first mile, he thinks of one hundred eight shinobi rules, and how somehow the one everyone must be reminded of is Rule 25. He catalogues: his weapons are missing. His coordination is off. His chakra is hiding deeper than his bones. (Solution pending.)

The second mile, he thinks of a thousand different jutsus, of a thousand different ways to die. He notices: the rocks cast no shadows, and that the sun has not shifted in the sky.

The third mile, he thinks, maybe, he shouldn't have left Obito behind.

The fourth mile, he stops, cursing softly, before turning around.

 

* * *

  

There's a flicker at the edge of his vision that Obito has been steadfastly ignoring, floating black dots that scatter and coalesce into different forms. He makes out a claw at one point, a tail at another, playing at the corner of his eyes like a poor shadow puppet display.

There's no one around to hear him but Obito whispers, "There's something in my eyes."

At the very least he no longer feels like his head is going to cave in from the pressure or his eyes are going to burn out of his skull. If he concentrates, he thinks he can almost feel his chakra.It's enough for him to extend his senses and feel a presence approaching him, speed just shy of a lopping gait. His attention wanders for a second before he feels something settling just out of striking range, to the left of his head.

"Seriously? You couldn't even stay away for an entire day?" Obito mutters, rolling onto his side. "You really have to work on-"

Obito breaks off, staring, breath temporarily halted.

Rin is sitting, hands folded on her skirt and legs tucked to her side, looking exactly like Obito remembers her, more beautiful since she's died. She tilts her head to the side and smiles.

(Obito thinks: there's something in my throat.)

Obito wants to smile back but his facial muscles aren't cooperating and he cannot find his voice. At the lack of response Rin's smile dims, an uncertain waver of a line, before she slowly raises her hand.

Obito doesn't even realize he's reaching out to her until he hears Kakashi's distant voice, hazy as a mirage, shouting, "No, don't touch it!"

Even if he had enough time to respond, Obito would have ignored Kakashi. His hand meets Rin's and a spark travels between their fingers, running up his arm and burrowing into his heart.

Rin frowns, as if considering something. Obito tries to close his hand around hers but suddenly she is shadow and smoke and Kakashi is still shouting in the distance and the world jerks out from underneath him, tilting nauseatingly to the left.


End file.
